Antivirus pioneer Symantec declares AV “dead” and “doomed to failure”

The Symantec hype -- as we're reading throughout this this thread -- is overly exaggerated.
At the risk of a repeat.

 

@IBK

Why this post ??

 

Symantec always had "great" explanation and "great" technology for everything...

I dont know why people care anymore about Symantec?

Every second average user of Norton, that I come across, has computer full of PUPs, adware and often undetected spyware.

Todays main complaint from end users is PUPs and Adware. Norton does not protect against these, probably because they are scared of lawsuit from these companies.

If you run a FREE AdwCleaner it removes bunch of those programs.

 

Perhaps one reason for coming across more Norton users with PUPs is because it comes installed on new computers. Many who buy new computers aren't initially experienced enough to know about avoiding PUPs.

People might switch to some other security program when Norton expires but the real reason people don't get PUPs from then on may not be because of the program change. It's possibly more because they have gained experience at avoiding them. I'm not sure any similar security program would be better at keeping PUPs at bay if they are not actively opted out of.

I agree about AdwCleaner. I've seen that do a good job on a number of computers.

 

The legal case argument is overblown and the reality is far more less palletable.

Symantec are being paid by a great deal of Adware/PUP companies to endorse their products.

Here is just one examples of many 10's of 1000's on the web.

(Conduit toolbar platform)
hxxp://mixidj.ourtoolbar.com/

Look to the bottom of the page.




That trademark\endorsement is not freely given.

Symantec will not detect\unload Conduit toolbars of all flavours (240K+) because they are in their pockets!

So rinse and repeat for many well known mainstream PUP/Adware installs and you have the full picture.

 

i see so many pc's running norton that are infected badly during my daily work. i just did one the other day that malwarebytes found over 10,000 files / registry entries and she couldnt even use the system there were so many thing running all over it. sadly this seems to be a more common occurrence of late within the past year or so i see more and more infected norton machines.

 

Some more reactions from the industry:

http://blog.trendmicro.com/av-dead-end-topic/

http://www.halbheer.ch/security/2014/05/11/is-anti-virus-technology-dead/

 

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/05/is_antivirus_de_1.html

 

Many products like Panda, Avira and Eset have improved protection by utilising cloud components. We can see better results for these products in recent tests. They excel in both real world and signature based tests. Symantec should have utilised more cloud technology for signature based scans.

But the main issue is Symantec being a large company is loosing its av market share to other competitors and they have resources to invest in more profitable business just like IBM sold its desktop business to Lenovo to concentrate on ventures with higher profit margins.

 

It still won't help much anyway. Plus, it will introduce a few more problems/objections, especially if we see it from the privacy perspective.

 

From Norton Protection Blog: "Antivirus-Only Is Dead. Long Live Security!"

http://community.norton.com/t5/Nort...-Only-Is-Dead-Long-Live-Security/ba-p/1134752

 

So they've added word Only to their claims? How original... Now they should stop selling their Antivirus and sell Internet security only.

 

just been reading through this thread and it makes me realise why I stopped visiting here:-so many "experts" with so little knowledge,every 2nd member works in IT(yeh right!!) and comes across loads of infected PCs all running the AV product they are slagging off "in their daily work",yeh right!
Exaggerated claims do not make an opinion more valid,the claims by Norton do make a fair bit of sense as since day 1 vendors have been fighting a reactive battle to try to keep malware off PCs,proactive protection is only a relatively new way,but that is pretty poor in most cases,all they are really saying is we need to change our way of thinking and dealing with the "effects" and not actually the infection,could be viewed as a form of vaccination,like in humans:-they don't stop the viruses invading us but stop them having severe repercussions on our health
By the way this company using the norton name isn't the same one who pioneered AV for PC's,that was run by Peter Norton,who sold it to Symantec about 14yrs ago!

 

Actually AV is not dead but sure AV companies are getting less and less profits, mainly due to the decline in PC use. Smartphones and tablets are generally not giving revenue to the security companies.

 

So many comments !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Do we have to react to every statement by a business house ?

 

offtopic, they really had a great utility back in the eighties called "Norton Utilities". I used that program a lot back in the day. Not sure about their AV.
Ice

 

Norton Secured logo has nothing to do with any of it. It just means the domain was verified by Symantec. End of story.

 

if symantec cant keep up with their competitors, they should probably start using Bitdefender Engine..

 

If you think this is about Symantec's AV vs other AVs you clearly haven't understood a thing.

 

Btw, I´ve just watched G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (the movie) and I saw that Dr. Mindbender was protecting his computer with Norton Internet Security, I wonder how much they payed for that.

http://www.toplessrobot.com/2009/08/gi_joe_the_rise_of_tenuous_merchandising.php
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1046173/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Mindbender

 

Its not dead,its still alive and kicking,we have some AV companies that are currently working on great technologies like Avira,360 safe etc.

 

Symantec is the doomed one in this case

 

It's not that their AV is poor, but it's hypocritical of them to still continue producing new versions, and then backtrack by saying it's alive but not enough.